In Our Final Hour
by Travithian Axile
Summary: One-shot, post Karnak. Dan finds Rorschach's hat in the snow; and then what's left of the man himself. Dan/Laurie.


**Title:** In Our Final Hour  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Dan, Laurie, Rorschach  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 2385  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-Karnak. Dan finds Rorschach's hat in the snow; and then what's left of the man himself.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> My first (and probably only) Watchmen fic. Part of me still feels really weird about that. Also, please excuse my excessive love of semi-colons and non-resolutions. Written a year ago and posted only to LJ, finally decided to archive it here as well.

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><p>Blood on the snow, like blots on a white mask.<p>

Dan stands in the doorway and stares, caught between grief and disbelief. The snow falls in a moment that seems to go on forever. Cold hands press fleeting touches to his face, melt into half-frozen tears. His eyes burn. His blood burns. It is as though the ever-present anger that held the dead man together refuses to die, and flares within him, now; a spark off a stone, onto dry, brittle kindling.

"Dan?" Laurie comes up behind him, taps at his back. Dan feels a surge of—protectiveness, wants to cover her eyes, kick snow over the blood, as though nothing had ever happened. But that's stupid; she's seen more than her fair share of blood, and after last night both of them have seen enough carnage that even the shock of Rorschach's death seems almost an afterthought, a forgotten footnote to one of the most terrible tragedies in history.

The pain beats against Dan's numbness. He has a feeling he should be saying something: something meaningful, something that will cause everything to fall into place at last. But he says nothing, stands there like a lost child, while Laurie gently pushes him aside so she can come out and—see.

"_Oh, _Dan," she says, and at that, the horror in her voice, the sympathy directed more at him than the man long vaporized into smoke, Dan cracks, feels his icy exterior crumbling down like mirror shards. "If he wasn't dead already," he says hoarsely, "I'd finish the job for him." His fists clench inside his gloves. "What was he _thinking, _trying to go against a god? Would it have _killed _him, to just _lie? _He could've done whatever he _wanted, _back in New York. All he had to do was lie!"

Unspoken, in the air between them, the living and the dead: It was the truth that killed him.

There is just himself and Laurie, and the bloodstain in the snow; a meaningless shape assigned significance, Rorschach's last message from beyond the grave. It screams at him against the white like an accusation. _Should have died too, _Dan fancies it says.

(He remembers 1977, a tale of two men: one who quit, and one who never did.)

He doesn't realize he'd said it out loud until Laurie puts a hand on his arm and squeezes, hard. It's enough to jolt him from the murky cloud of stirred memories, and for a moment he stares at her like she's a stranger. She holds his gaze, makes sure he's present and attentive, before she speaks. "It's not over yet, Dan."

He shuts his eyes, thinks of the long trek ahead of them back to the Owlship, the longer flight back to his broken city—and God, all the long years beyond. "I know," he says.

She shakes him. "I don't mean it like that." Takes a deep breath. They're both circumventing the edge of a huge unknown, trying to make jagged edges fit together. They have to be so very careful, in how they speak or move. Words are power, as they have reason to know; with words, Adrian Veidt had forced them to make an unspeakable vow, convinced a god of the righteousness of his actions. Dan has never been used to standing aside. Even now his fists itch for the simplicity of the old days, when justice was so easily dispensed with a punch and a few broken fingers.

There is no one and everyone to blame for this death, so small and unnoticed, in this distant land. Jon is far, far away, in a place where hatred has no meaning or loss. He can't even hate Adrian, standing tall and proud upon his heap of dead, murdered, sacrificed for a dream. There were just too many _bodies_; a number that boggles the mind, makes the reality less real than fiction. A small, pathetic part of him continues to hope: _It was just a nightmare, and you're going to wake up anytime now..._ Dan feels lost, floundering in the dark. Instinctively he looks to Laurie. She'd pulled him back once from the stifling monotony of his civilian life. He waits now for another lifeline.

"It's not over," she repeats. "You _saw _New York on Veidt's televisions! Right now whether that stupid squid came from space or Veidt's magic hat is the least of their worries." Her nails dig into his arm, and it's a real pain, solid and reassuring, after the vague churning in his heart. "Maybe what we did was right, maybe what we did was wrong. But we've got a responsibility, either way, to clean up Veidt's goddamned mess." She touches his face then, eyes soft and glimmering. "Nothing ambiguous about that, Dan."

_We can still be the heroes our costumes say we are._

Rorschach never had any doubts about whether he was right or wrong, Dan thinks, guiltily, because it was a trait that never ceased to annoy Nite Owl back in the day. But he envies Rorschach his unflinching moral compass now, and the peace that his tormented partner has at long last found. The only peace Dan has is in Laurie, and the future that she offers, away if not free from the shadow of Karnak. It's something that he might be able to live with; only time will tell.

He bends down, gingerly pries the fedora from the bloody mess. It is surprisingly unscathed. Dan holds it for a moment—the last concrete thing left of his partner—before he lets it spin away on the wind. In time the snow will bury Adrian Veidt's sins under its pristine whiteness, as though yesterday had never been.

If only time and distance would do the same for them.

Dan starts the hoverbikes, and then they, too, vanish into the swirling white.

-_end-_


End file.
